I’m working on a 1930/31 Westinghouse WR-8 Columnaire clock-radio which had a bad transformer. The filter capacitors failed and shorted the high-voltage secondary, burning it open and causing a lot of heat and melting.

The replacement is a General Electric service transformer from a Radiola 82, which shared the same chassis. Production revisions led to an improved design over the original, with a separate 2.5V winding for the #45 output tubes to reduce hum and the rest of the RF tubes on their own independent 2.5V winding, so the new transformer will offer a noticeable performance advantage over the original, too!

It’s a real challenge sometimes. It took me a couple months to source this transformer. I was nearly to the point of building a new power supply based on the specifications when the replacement transformer turned up.